Oh, Lord! The Old Game of Dirtying Up the Opposition—a Mainstream Media Strategy—Is Taking Center Stage As Election Winds Down

Liberal journalists are mouthing the same view: Oh, Lord, let it end soon! They mean the primary election which ends today. Why? Because conservative candidates—one in particular, Jim Oberweis—is shattering the conformity that has given voters very little choice since the era of Big Jim Thompson. Thompson ran as a Republican who was indistinguishable from a liberal Democrat and his 6 foot 6-inch elephantine presence pervades in the state, from the hallucinatory state office building of glass and weird statutory he erected that carries his name to a state Republican party that is as impervious to reform as Big Jim was to responsibility as he clinked martini glasses with Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle while, as audit chief for the Hollinger company, he gave the two crooks who ran the Sun-Times a careless assent to loot the joint. As governor he set a precedent, promising no new taxes and breaking his promise after election, hob-nobbing with Democrats and greasing it so there was no alternative. As result, Thompson became—and until recent disclosures has been—wildly popular with the media. His successors have been of varied quality but in agreement that the GOP continue as a haven for lobbyists and revolving door hustlers. Jim Edgar was a mild, understated type who survived some scandals; George Ryan was probably the most corrupt official Illinois—possibly the nation—has had when one looks closely at the maw of decadent deals that have spewed forth from his administration as secretary of state. It is clear that Judy Baar Topinka is in the same mode as the other liberal GOP governors.


Now, I have said that good media—particularly newspapering—should be frankly partisan as objectivity is impossible and have saluted most of the Sun-Times for carrying out its mission with verve. What I can’t understand is Oh, Lord, let it end soon from some who wish to end the controversy over the old liberal GOP deals. That’s not a prayer from a partisan reformist media but from a media that wishes to end debate. They do so because they fear they may lose today—at he polls and the game-plan of kissy between the two parties will end. . Do you think Colonel McCormick and Colonel Frank Knox, two protagonists of the old partisan media ever whimpered that they hoped it would end soon—McCormick’s fight with FDR, Knox’s fight against those he saw as Republican reactionaries? Or William Randolph Hearst against those he saw as offenders of our national sovereignty? Or Dorothy Schiff of the old stridently liberal New York Post against those she termed fascists? Can you imagine the late Mike Royko whimpering the hope and prayer that the struggle against Boss Daley would end?


No, some fainting-dead-away journalists of today can’t even summon the strength to dish it out fairly during a primary where a real conservative is running—because it’s so horrid to contemplate a change from the era of Big Jimbo. Specifically because there may be a break in the pattern and a return to social traditionalism.


Thompson insured that the Reagan Revolution which swept most of the Midwest and west didn’t come to Illinois. The media here, more uniformly and polemically pro-abort than can be found even in Washington.,D. C. where there are two dailies taking markedly different stands, hate the idea of a social conservative winning in the Republican party. That’s why they despise Jim Oberweis. He’s not only conservative but was one of them on the single-most issue of concern to them—abortion—before he changed his mind ala Ronald Reagan. Not only is he pro-life but he’s resolutely pro-business. Not only pro-life and pro-business but anti-illegal immigration. Not only pro-life, pro-business and anti-illegal immigration but opposed to gays receiving special privileges. The media which can’t remember when politics involved heated difference of opinion, doesn’t know how to act with dissent. They perceive in Bill Brady one who is soft on the issues, therefore able to be rolled. I hope they find out someday they’re wrong. But still they worry about the possibility of Oberweis winning. So they wail: Oh, Lord, let it end soon!


Mainstream media have surfaced with two novel but pathetic attacks on Oberweis in the last days. One is that the TV commercial showing Topinka polka-ing with George Ryan is shameful. Imagine that! Topinka told them she’s polka-ed with many people and MSM is immediately at the battlements abjuring that she was slandered. Media know Blagojevich has the same polka tape but that’s o.k., he’s a pro-abort. The second has to do with a bargain offered to the two anti-Topinka candidates that Oberweis offered that was not in their interest and which they turned down. MSM howls that he took leave from his senses to offer it. That and relying on a spurious quote from Brady purportedly made by Oberweis which sounds like he’s an evangelical. But who really sounds like a purportedly weird Evangelical? Oh, Lord, let it end soon!


Media’s cowardice to react against injustice exhibited itself not long ago when a gay rights zealot, Rick Garcia proclaimed that homosexuality is God’s way of practicing diversity assailed not just Oberweis but the archbishop of Chicago without any rebuke from the “watchdog” media. His attacking Oberweis is par for the course in politics since Oberweis is a candidate—but despicable because Oberweis’ view on homosexuality is the Judeo-Christian view which MSM is too queasy to defend. But when Garcia singled out Francis Cardinal George as a bigot, there is no defense because mainstream media fears being called bigot themselves. Garcia who calls himself a Catholic (although his special theology does not allow that homosexual practices are sins) specializes in excommunicating people out of his church, something his church has been woefully lax at doing.


The media become mere bystanders at this demagogic display because they are too fearful of contradicting a true demagogue (they’d rather play a DVD of “Good Night and Good Luck” and moon about the old days of Edward R. Murrow which they never knew. Too young to remember much of the civil rights struggle when heroes were legitimately fighting discrimination because of race, MSM media try to recycle a latter day version. Garcia sees himself as the latter day Rev. Jesse Jackson, although he’s not as good at devising heroic couplets. Thereupon the MSM media—always cowered by the thought that they may be viewed as bigots themselves—are reduced to pulp: one big mass of quivering guilt-Jello. They can’t defend the Cardinal, can’t stand up to a bully who name-calls because in doing so, people may think the media are homophobic. To get on the right side of the Garcia people and other interest groups, they assail Oberweis or pray Oh Lord, let it end soon.


Why Oh let it end soon? Shouldn’t mainstream journalists welcome a battle in at least one, if not the two, parties? Shouldn’t journalists behave as the partisans they are instead of pretending to be the objective purveyers of truth which they are not and welcome a good fight, particularly an ideological fight? Not if they’re hot-house plants. No, they can’t tolerate dissent from the conventional wisdom. They don’t mind dishing up attacks which is their wont but they cannot stand others doing the same. Most of all, they fear they may lose the election today. That’s the reason behind Oh, let it end soon.


Because Topinka has dismayed some of the liberal media with her inability to debate which has led to her being a no-show, they turn to one who proclaims himself a social conservative but who ingratiates himself with them by blistering Oberweis. They’d rather Brady won because they believe he doesn’t mean what he says rather than one whom they realize means exactly what he says and if given a chance will do it. I only hope they are wrong.


Yesterday I sat next to a distinguished citizen—a Democrat—at the City Club luncheon and we talked about the gubernatorial contest on the Republican side. This guy asked me: Is Oberweis goofy or what? You know where the idea that Oberweis is unstable comes from? It comes from a wing of an propagandistic media who cannot handle dissent, area not content with responding but attack his intellectual and emotional capacity. They didn’t hear him arguing in a brilliant repartee on my WLS radio show with Jeff Berkowitz, who graduated at U of C Law over the nature of free trade as taught at the University of Chicago economics theory and a crack down on illegal immigration. Berkowitz a brilliant interrogator, a crack lawyer and journalist—no Oberweis fan—was engaging in verbal ju jitsu with a brilliant entrepreneur: it was a battle to behold and listen to. It was worthy of the old

“University of Chicago Roundtable” with Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler. It’s easier to say “one brick short of a load” than phrase a cogent argument.


A segment of mainstream media here cannot comprehend debate because most can’t handle ideas. So they respond to a man who typifies ideas they abhor by saying he’s cracked, a few bricks short of a load. That’s their style—wholesale defamation. When I call for a return to partisan media, I believe that we need media who provide ideas, facts and cogent views to back up their view of the news. Not scurrilously saying an opponent is one brick short of a load.


Do me a favor. Go out and nominate Oberweis—even if you don’t agree with him, to give this immature, babyish, tantrum-throwing segment of mainstream media the fits. Then you’ll set them to do more of what they haven’t evidently done much of—pray: Oh, Lord, please, please—pretty please—let it end soon because there are ideas out there that we can’t respond to except that we know we don’t like those who advance them.